the unlight bearableness of translating a really great title

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books

Oh, I do, I do like books. One of my favorite scenes: the narrator of Bohumil Hrabal’s Too Loud a Solitude (in Michael Henry Heim’s English translation) contemplating the prospect of being killed by the mass of literature that hangs above his bed tumbling down upon him in his sleep. This is not my fantasy! But it is a fascinating, compelling image, being swallowed up by one’s passion, the thing that has been consuming one already in effect since the age of, what, eleven? a precocious 8? a tardy 17? It’s never too late to be consumed! You can always look forward to the avalanche coming down upon your head in the future. Perhaps this was the inspiration for the paper blob commercial from the 1980s, though I don’t understand why they needed the Alexander Nevsky theme music.

I’ve written a new book! It took me a long time, like twelve years or so. I actually finished it almost two years ago. This, I think, is a very good thing. I wouldn’t have wanted the book I finished almost two years ago to come out fast. It would have been too soon. I’ll be blogging about it here, along with some other stuff.